Subaru Impreza Tire/Wheel Questions

Comments

Thanks for the help. I think I'll just get new tires. The 98 Suburu my son in law put new tires on it and then it keeps overheating. We think it's the head gasket. It has 285,000 miles on it. Do you think it's worth trying to sell or we were going to donate it to Purple Heart? The car looks good, paint and body.

There's nearly a 100% chance that it is the head gaskets. If either of you have the time or inclination, the repair (while time consuming) is not overly complex. If you do it yourself, it is only about a $5-600 job. I did this work on my 1996 Outback at ~193,000 miles.

If you don't do it yourself, it is a spendy bugger. Whether or not it is worth it depends entirely on the car and your attitude toward it. If you keep it for another couple years after the repair, it'll pay for itself.

I'm looking for studded snow tires for my 2008 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. This is the ski car so the snow tires have to be good. Prices for the stock tire size (P205/50R17) run well over $200 per tire, I suspect because they're low profile and sexy. Holy suffering catfish!!

I'm wondering if second set of wheels to use as winter wheels with normal-profile utilitarian non-sexy and much less expensive snow tires might be a good option.

Is this a reasonable idea?Will different sized wheels screw up performance or safety of the Sube?Where can I get the best deal on the stuff?

I am female, generally clueless about cars, and don't want to get ripped off, so I'm hesitant to go to the tire store and get taken for a ride.

You can go with 16" wheels on the Impreza, and yes, the tires will be less expensive. I have seen some tires for my Forester as much as a $40 difference between the 16" and 17" size equivalents for a given brand/model of tire!

Personally, I would not recommend studded tires. You will likely be better served with studless snow tires, such as the Bridgestone Blizzak, Goodyear UltraGrip Ice, or Michelin X-Ice.

That said, TireRack is a good place to go to compare tires, see the best compatible "alternate" tire (rim) sizes, etc. If you live in America (e.g., the contiguous 48 states), you can even buy tires/wheel sets with the tires already installed online for reasonable rates.

As a jump-start, the 205/55/R16 is a pretty close match for your stock size. It is 0.8% larger, meaning that when you're driving 60mph, your speedometer will read 60.465 mph.

Just bought a sport premium model and the car has Yokohama avid s35d, I think. :blush: Anyways, they look great and so far the drive and handling is good n the dry. Haven't taken it in the wet yet. Tire rack rated these tires poor, but the consumer reviews were all from Mazda 3 series cars. Any opinions on these tires from Subie owners?

I would say you will need new tires by about the 25k mark or in about a year and a half. OEM tires are terrible. They feather quickly and are poorly made. That goes for OEM tires on most cars from my experience.

That's probably not far off what most owners will experience. The RE92A is a poor tire. I would expect life to be between 25,000 and 40,000 miles. Some owners have claimed considerably longer life. My personal experience is that whenever you decide to get rid of them (whether worn out or not), you'll be doing yourself a favor! :blush:

If you want really excellent snow tires, try Nokian Hakkapeliitta winter tires, studded or not, is up to you. We sell these at my work in Canada, where we have winter 6 months out of the year and they are really good; we also sell Michelin X-Ice and Bridgestone Blizzaks', but the Nokians are better as they are the people who invented winter tires.

That's why I was sticking with impreza and wrx rims only. Looking at the link above, looks like many of the oem rims would fit. If someone knew which rims will ft without a problem, I can start searching for a second pair.

The only ones that will not fit are STi rims. Otherwise, 16" or greater Subaru rims with a 5x100 bolt pattern will fit it. I recommend that when you find a set, you test-mount one on the front of the car just to ensure it will meet your need.

A few times a year, I take my Impreza on trips that involve a lot of dirt roads, including some that are pretty rough, basically mild 4WD roads.

I ought to own a Forester or an Outback for trips like this, but I don't. Can I "Foresterize" my Impreza for such trips by putting on oversized, higher-profile tires? If so, how much bigger? The OEM height profile is 55. Could I run a 65 or 70?

If this is possible, I'll just keep on hand a spare set of tires and rims and put them on for my trips to the back country.

You might consider a mix of smaller rims with slightly higher profile. I am not sure if the 2007 would still take a 15" rim, but you might check on that. If so, you could go with a stock '96-'99 Outback wheel (205/70R15), and that might be just about perfect at the same width with maximum sidewall and a 0.7" increase in radius (if you have the clearance!).

Assuming the 15" will not fit, your model looks to have 16" rims on it with the 205/55 tires. You would need to measure the clearance, both in the wheel well and between the tire and strut, to actually determine what will fit. Just increasing the sidewall height will give you a little more flexibility than if you were wanting to go wider as well because you shouldn't have any issues with rubbing when you turn. At a 205mm width, moving to a 60% ratio will increase your radius by .4", while a 65% ratio will increase your radius 0.8".

While that radius increase won't give you much additional ground clearance, I imagine it will help when you're dragging belly through that mud or crossing that creek!

In addition, those ratios will also knock your speedometer/odometer off by 3% and 6%, respectively. So, while running them, if your car is traveling at 60 mph, the speedometer will read ~58 mph and ~56 mph (respectively).

Yes, I would want to keep the 205 width and just get a higher profile sidewall. It looks like a 65 is about the most that would fit, and it would give me about an inch more height, which would nice out there in the dirt.

It won't help much with the biggest problem, though, which is the angle of attack. That low front end really sticks out there.

That it does. I had the same problem with my Outback ('96) when I took it off road. My Forester, a 2010, has nice angles on it. It sure could use a rear LSD though. The VDC does nothing for you in those situations, so you're basically stuck with open differentials.

Hey out there! Haven't posted in a while, my Soob is still running strong - 110K miles, yay! - but my low-tire-pressure light has started blinking intermittently for the second time...last time I needed a wheel sensor to the tune of $300, and I am sure this will be the same thing again. I am loath to repair it, as I would have paid to delete this system if I could have when I bought the car. And I suppose that if I repair it then it will just happen again - there are four wheels after all! Mine is an '09 OBS, one of the last Outback Sports they made before they went all Crosstrek and stuff. Anyone else out there having this problem with their Impreza?